When the celebrated Welsh poet Dylan Thomas arrived in New York on his first visit, in 1950, for a tour of poetry readings around the country, America didn't know what had hit it. Angelic, devilish, immoral, charming, self-destructive, given to alcoholic binges, he was not what the sober world of academe had expected. Students loved him (although after his first few encounters with them, the girls had to be protected) and he made quick friends with writers, journalists, and barflies, instantly creating a pop-culture mythology of the doomed artist for the later 20th century. Here the man who was his patron and guide, poet John Malcolm Brinnin, bears witness to Thomas's slow descent into hell.